Localism

Scot McKnight (HT: Gerardo Marti)

It seems wildly visionary and profoundly problem-solving for a young adult to go to Asia or to Africa or to South America but it is hardly an experience to go next door and do the very same deed of compassion and justice. The vision of the Christian church is that the vision of Jesus needs to find shape in a local community of local people who care about the local community in local ways. This is not about how best to “build a church” so much as how best to contribute in love to our world. Doing it locally is less sexy; but local servants are far more influential than foreign rich kids who are often enough motivated to help for a while but not stick around long enough to make change sustainable.

Must Read: Jesus Christ, Capital Defendant

In the Huffington Post here.

None of these echoes of Christ’s journey in our modern system, of course, is in itself an overwhelming argument against the death penalty. Nor is any bit of that story more of a condemnation of capital punishment than the fact that Christ came upon a legal execution and told the executioners that they did not have the moral authority to continue the killing (in John 8, the stoning of the adultress). Still, I do think that there is something powerful in simply considering Christ as a criminal defendant. That subtle change in perspective can change worlds. No, Christ was no murderer. He was the opposite of the venal criminals who largely populate death rows. Yet, it is at Christ’s invitation that we visit him when we visit those in prison, and I would imagine that there is no exception for death row. If it was God who wrote the story of Jesus as a criminal defendant, then it was God who told us that how we treat criminal defendants is important, and we need to heed that message even when it runs against our most fervent urge towards retribution and finality.

Jonathan Chaplin on Loving Faithful Institutions

From The Other Journal at Mars Hill Graduate School. The whole piece is long, but well worth reading.

One illustration of this task, I’ve been suggesting, is to develop faith-guided models of normative business corporations (rather than just lambasting the shortcomings of existing ones). This won’t come easy. It will require a combination of extensive practical experience of the business world at many levels and extensive knowledge of the traditions of Christian-inspired social and economic reflection. Without the resources of business entrepreneurs, theologians, philosophers, or ethicists can fulminate against “oppressive global capitalism” until the cows come home (if you’ll now forgive a lapse into pre-industrial language), but Christian business practitioners will not give them the time of day. 

Yet without the resources of the traditions of Christian social thought, the result will be similar to what I have all too often encountered from business students at (even) Christian colleges. From their accounts, it becomes clear that their business professors often have neither the training nor the inclination to take any real critical distance from the reigning secular, utilitarian, liberal economic paradigms in their field. And the result of that deficiency is that generations of young Christian businesspeople will be sent out into the world of work thinking that the currently dominant structure of the business corporation is already normative from a Christian point of view. Some of these young businesspeople may turn out to be generous benefactors to Christian causes, but few will be transformers of the corporate sector in the direction of an economy of hope, justice, and solidarity.

On public prayer

John Stackhouse recently answered a question about praying in public situations (invocations at graduations, government meetings, corporate events, etc.) that I thought was extremely thoughtful and right on. He’s Canadian, so the context is slightly different than here in the U.S., but not that different. Read the whole thing here.

Prayer is a wonderful thing, and too wonderful to be a sort of vestigial gesture to Canada’s past or a way of adding a bit of extra solemnity to a secular occasion.

Worse, it marginalizes a lot of people: people who don’t believe in God, people who don’t believe in the particular kind of deity being prayed to, and people who do believe in God of that sort and don’t like the idea of an all-purpose prayer on behalf of an institution that otherwise pays no serious attention to God’s Word in its operations–such as the University of British Columbia, or my high school basketball team, or my friend’s company.

So no, I wouldn’t agree to pray. Prayer is too great to be sprinkled on a secular occasion. That’s why I’m against formal prayers also in Canadian legislatures, city councils, school boards, and the like.

For the poor; against “10% is enough”

James Howell’s response to Dan’s post is up here. It’s mostly the main objection that Jesse raises, that capping interest will limit lending in a way that ultimately hurts the poor. He gets a little into the differences between the subsistence agrarian economy of Bible times and our current global market economy, but doesn’t really articulate a method for how those ancient legal codes are/aren’t binding or guiding or whatever for us now.

See previous posts here and here.

More on the 10% is Enough Campaign

Here, this time from Emmaus Way‘s own Dan Rhodes, in Duke Divinity School’s Call & Response blog. I’ll link to the rejoinder from James Howell (senior pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte) once it’s up.

In some sense, the campaign is simply the attempt to reintroduce the word “usury” to our vocabularies. Some acts of lending are simply unjust and exploitative, and as Christians we condemn these usurious practices. The church never changed its mind and deemed usurious practices legitimate. Any talk of usury simply disappeared. We became at home in a world where profits are praised and returns glorified as beneficial for all, despite the fact that income disparities are now as great as they’ve ever been. It has become extremely difficult to nameany amount of interest usurious. For the church to say “10% is enough” is to claim that usury does in fact exist. We have an obligation to name it.

The Parable of the Dishonest Steward

Daniel M. Bell, Jr., associate professor of theological ethics at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, has a fantastic article up at The Other Journal about one of Jesus’ more mystifying parables, the parable of the dishonest steward (or shrewd manager) found in Luke 16:1-9.

Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

“The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

“So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

” ‘Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied.
“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.’

“Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’
” ‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.
“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

“The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

This is one of those passages I’ve always read and thought, “Whiskey tango foxtrot, Jesus. What’s this about?” But I find Bell’s interpretation convincing. Check it out here.

Seven Theses on a Mission Approach to Law

David Opderbeck proposes some principles in regard to law/government on JesusCreed (here). What do you think?

The Seven Theses on a Missional Approach to Law

(Note:  “positive law” here means simply “law enacted by human beings pursuant to human governmental authority”)

1.    Positive law plays only a limited role in God’s economy of salvation.  Neither individual human beings nor human culture can be redeemed through positive law in itself.  A missional theology of law therefore can never mistake law for mission.

2.   Positive law can, however, help check the spread of evil, serve as a reminder of the good, and facilitate God’s mission of liberating human beings from the powers of sin and oppression.   A missional theology of law therefore will emphasize the law’s liberating potential.

3.    Positive law is provisional and temporary.  In the eschaton, when God will be all in all, the nature and function of positive law itself will be taken up by God and transformed.  A missional theology of law therefore will not have law as its ultimate telos.

4.    Positive law is contextual and incarnational.  Although just laws always spring from universal moral principles, positive law always represents the mediation of moral principles into a particular historical and cultural moment.  A missional theology of law therefore will remain wary of absolutist claims about what the positive law should say in any historical moment or context.

5.    Positive law is bounded by human limitations and by sin.  The natural weaknesses of human knowledge and perception limit the human ability to craft law that will comprehensively address all wrongs.  Moreover, the pervasiveness of sin means that an ideal legal regime can never be realized prior to the eschaton.  Legal policy decisions inevitably involve choices among competing ideals and suboptimal alternatives.  A missional theology of law therefore will always be both ever reforming and pragmatic.

6.    Positive law derives its legitimacy primarily from its consistency with God’s character and secondarily from the consent of the governed.  A law that is consistent with God’s character but that is not supported by a broad public consensus ultimately will undermine the rule of law.  A missional theology of law therefore will avoid the extremes of theonomic  / reconstructionist and libertarian approaches to law.

7.    Positive law does not derive its legitimacy or authority from the Church or from any ecclesial body or structure.  When the Church seeks the enactment of laws that do not enjoy a broad consensus of public support, this compromises both the rule of law and the missionary posture of the Church, even when such laws are otherwise consistent with God’s character.   A missional theology of law therefore will insist that legal and political advocacy embody the virtues of humility, patience, willingness to suffer, and regard for the other.

Increasing Returns and The Fall

So, I’ve been thinking a lot this holiday season about increasing returns. For those who don’t know, this is the “rich get richer” phenomena which seems pretty pervasive to me. Good college football teams get the best recruits, a few popular artists (music, theatrical, etc.) get a majority of the popularity, ‘hot’ technology companies attract the best talent and thus gain more advantage. Those are just a few examples – you can likely think of more. It may be harder to think of something where this is not true. The opposite would be a dampening process, sort of like your air conditioner – when it gets hotter, cool air comes out to reverse the rise, not reinforce it. Can you think of any societal process which is naturally dampening? I haven’t yet, but I’ve not given up either.

The popular get more popular, the rich get richer, the powerful get more powerful. And there are cycles/crashes, obviously – exponential increases aren’t sustainable, and so the same reinforcing process that gave you popularity can also crush you. Ask Britney Spears.

And then I think of socialism/communism. As I’ve stated previously, my primary gripe with those political theories is that they inevitably lead to centralization of power when the group size gets at all large (bigger than a small commune) because it gets too big to self-govern. Then, you get a situation like communist Russia, which is again a rich-get-richer phenomenon. Those in power use that power to stay in power and profit for themselves at the expense of the masses. And socialism inevitably leads to centralization of power as we discover more social problems that need to be solved by the government to be sure that things are done equitably. But this leads to a very large and powerful government, which the larger it gets, the less accountable it becomes to voters. Rinse, dry, repeat and viola, you have an unaccountable, totalitarian government.

So, how much of this is due to the fall? Doesn’t it seem that humanity at some level was designed to live together in a way that the rich give more away, and the poor find themselves to be the major benefactors of that largess without even needing to ask? This is a big part of Jesus’ counter-cultural message – to give away your riches, to give away power, and to eschew the praise of men (popularity). On the one hand, it is better for you – your soul is less tied to those things when you are able to give them away and you live in freedom and not slavery to them. But it is also better for society. We as Christians are the dampening mechanism, at least in some sense. In another sense, that seems impossible.

A lot of what I’ve said here is probably obvious to some. I guess what feels new to me is that this seeming inexorable push for increasing returns to various things is embedded deep on our society and must be a major target of Christ’s redemptive work.

C.S. Lewis on Democracy and Centralized Power

In case you’ve not noticed reading the blog, I am quite skeptical about centralized power of any sort – political or business. It is the biggest reason why I want the government to do as little as possible and why I fear/oppose the big banks and any large monopoly. I’m happy to find what I believe to be a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis. when I came across this post which I found quite interesting. It is excerpts a debate between Lewis and J.B.S. Haldane, an eminent scientist in population genetics and Marxist. It started when Haldane wrote a critique of Lewis’s That Hideous Strength in 1946 to which Lewis responded.

Some of the themes of the book involve the centralization of power, human nature, democracy and religion. Some topics heavily quoted from the source above:

Centralized scientific planning. Haldane: “Mr. Lewis’s idea is clear enough. The application of science to human affairs can only lead to hell.” While denying that this is a correct statement of his views, Lewis goes on to say:

Every tyrant must begin by claiming to have what his victims respect and to give what they want. The majority in most modern countries respect science and want to be planned. And, therefore, almost by definition, if any man or group wishes to enslave us it will of course describe itself as ’scientific planned democracy’.

and

My fears of such a tyranny will seem to the Professor either insincere or pusillanimous. For him the danger is all in the opposite direction, in the chaotic selfishness of individualism. I must try to explain why I fear more the disciplined cruelty of some ideological oligarchy. The Professor has his own explanation of this; he thinks I am unconsciously motivated by the fact that I ’stand to lose by social change’. And indeed it would be hard for me to welcome a change which might well consign me to a concentration camp. I might add that it would be likewise easy for the Professor to welcome a change which might place him in the highest rank of an omnicompetent oligarchy. That is why the motive game is so uninteresting. Each side can go on playing ad nauseam, but when all the mud has been flung every man’s views still remain to be considered on their merits.

Democracy and conservatism. Haldane accuses Lewis of being anti-democracy, which accusation Lewis denies. He expands on his views:

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme -— whose highest real claim is to reasonable prudence -— the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.

This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldanes article. He simply cannot believe that a man could really be in doubt about usury. I have no objection to his thinking me wrong. What shocks me is his instantaneous assumption that the question is so simple that there could be no real hesitation about it. It is breaking Aristotle’s canon—to demand in every enquiry that degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not **on your life** to pretend that you see further than you do.

 

Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its _modus operandi_. The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety. The character in _That Hideous Strength_ whom the Professor never mentions is Miss Hardcastle, the chief of the secret police. She is the common factor in all revolutions; and, as she says, you won’t get anyone to do her job well unless they get some kick out of it.

Lewis’s response appears in the essay collection Of Other Worlds;, edited by Walter Hooper; excerpts are on-line at this site. There’s also a Wikipedia article on Haldane.